


Which Means I Win

by MayorMimi



Category: Persona 5, Persona Series
Genre: Alcohol, Ambiguous Relationships, Bartenders, Birthday, Comedy, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunkenness, Fluff and Humor, Intoxication, Lies, M/M, One Shot, Post-Canon, Reminiscing, Teasing, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-12
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:27:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24682297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayorMimi/pseuds/MayorMimi
Summary: Akira Kurusu was working part-time at the Crossroads Bar on the night Akechi turned 21. How that could end with waking up shirtless with a hangover and smelling like Akira, Akechi couldn't comprehend. This left with Akira with a story to tell...not that he wouldn't take some artistic liberty."So, a detective walks into a bar..."
Relationships: Akechi Goro & Amamiya Ren, Akechi Goro & Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro & Persona 5 Protagonist, implied Akechi Goro/Amamiya Ren
Comments: 3
Kudos: 43





	Which Means I Win

**Author's Note:**

> Apologies to any Italian reading this.

The living room was spinning when Akechi came to. He sat up on his chaise sofa, squinting against even the softest Wednesday morning light as his heart drummed in his ears. His hand clutched his chest, expecting a handful of fabric only to find feverish skin. It occurred to him upon looking down he sat shirtless save for a biker jacket loosely blanketing him. The piece wasn’t his style, though he’d recognize it anywhere—especially as he brought it to his nose and drank in the aromas of caffeine and cream.

“Akira,” he concluded in a voice rasping with thirst. Panic pounced on him as he wondered what could’ve occurred the previous night. Akechi made a dive for his phone, relieved it had enough juice left to make an emergency call.

“Kurusu, I demand an explanation.”

“ _Buon Giorno_ to you, too.” Akira’s voice crackled at the other end, but Akechi could tell from his slight husk his call had woken him up. “How’s the morning treating you?”

“All that’s keeping me from spewing right now is the cluster of questions I have.”

“Sure thing. Hey, remember to toss your shirt in the wash.”

“My—?” Akechi’s shirt had, in fact, been waiting for him on the coffee table. 

Akira ran a hand over his own torso as if to check he was still wearing his. “By the way, you should tell me about your workout routine sometime, because—” He blew a long, low whistle. " _Damn_."

“Never mind that.” Flummoxed, Akechi had been turning the generic shirt over to ascertain it was his. “How’d you know about my—?”

“Your clothes? Man, you must’ve been hammered, if you can’t remember.” Akira grabbed the alarm clock from his bedside table without grasping the digits on it. “Sit tight; you’re in for a ride.”

Akira Kurusu spent his Tuesday evenings working at the Crossroads Bar, the way he had the previous night. It paid enough to make a worthy part-time job for a college student in Tokyo, though the bar itself was hardly popular. Because of this, he practically bolted out of his skin when a creak from the door broke the silence, and the entrance framed a tall silhouette. “Fancy meeting you here,” remarked Akechi as he perched on a wooden stool at the middle of the counter.

His steady voice and smooth movements appeared rehearsed. Akira turned from the wall of bottles he’d been dusting, then struggled to make out Akechi’s face in the hot pink twilight of the room. He caught him adjusting his tie, as _all-business_ as ever at a bar. “I work here. What’s _your_ excuse?”

“I just happened to be passing by…”

“…By a red-light district?” Akechi recognized the gotcha in his tone but failed to respond to it. His mind flickered back to dropping by Leblanc to squeeze Kurusu’s location out of Futaba. She only spilled the beans after he promised to get her the latest Pocket Monsters game. Futaba _was_ technically still a teenager. “Whatever you say,” concluded Akira. “So, how does a Tom Collins for your 21st sound?”

“Whatever you recommend.” He watched him putter about behind the counter as soul-jazz music filled the silence between them. He poured lemon juice, sugar, and gin into a cocktail mixer before sealing it off and giving it a good shake. Then, he unsealed the container to add soda to the combination and tipped it into a high-ball glass before sliding it towards the customer. “ _Grazie_.”

“Any celebrations planned?” He watched him take his first sip and cough before making a graceless attempt to conceal it. 

Akechi proceeded at a slower pace, appreciating how his mixture drowned out the miasma of stale beer as he loosened his tie with a free hand. “ _This_ is my celebration.”

“Lame.”

“Oh, I was never one to make a fuss since my mamm—since _mother_ left.” He punctuated the remark by crossing his legs and downing another mouthful. 

Kurusu set to work clearing shot glasses from the surface the previous customers sat at. “Alright, then what’d that entail?”

“She’d… well, she’d take me to that bookstore across the street from here,” he began as Akira took a second to recall Akechi grew up in Shinjuku. "Mother would let me buy two comic books instead of one, then we’d go home and split a slice of pound cake between us—that was the best part. It was the only night I’d feel entitled to have her to myself when she’d spent so many with other men. We kept the tradition until my tenth birthday.”

“What about it?”

“Mother was busy with a _‘customer’_. So, she sent me out with money to buy myself crepe then promised to make it up for me on my eleventh.”

“Did she?”

“…By then, she’d already—Well, the rest is history.” He knocked his drink back. Almost on cue, the bell suspended by the door chimed to announce a regular arriving a bit later than she usually would.

———

Akira rested the alarm clock back onto its original spot, still with no idea what time it was. “Well, you showed up at my bar for your first drink. Like most beginners, you got tipsy like that—" he snapped— "and dissolved into a sobbing mess.” Akira stressed on ‘ _most_ ’ as he didn’t trust he would make that same mistake on his twenty-first.

“That fast?”  
  
“Lightweight.”  
  
“Come, now. It couldn’t have been that bad.”

“Wasn’t it? You were yelling about how much you loved your mom and forgot Japanese halfway through. I couldn’t tell if you were speaking Italian or babbling after that.”

Akechi wasn’t sure what to make of that response, uncertain whether he ought to take it seriously. “Well, at least there wasn’t a third party present.” He decided the rest of the story would clarify.

From his voice, he could tell Akira was smirking as he said: “Au contraire.”

Kurusu looked over at a young woman in her mid-twenties. From the regular’s strapless lace mini dress and velvet pumps, Akira drew a conclusion. “Had a party to attend before this?”  
  
“Sharp as ever.” She took a seat before him, glanced over at Akechi, then returned her line of sight to the bartender. “French 75 on the rocks.”

“So, what’s the occasion?” Akira tossed syrup and lemon juice into the ice-cube filled cocktail mixer, along with cognac. Akechi gave the cardboard menu stand by the counter listing special drinks a once-over. He couldn't help but wonder if she’d memorized their names. _Were the regulars expected to?_

The patron produced wipes from her purse to remove the last bit of mascara from her eyes. “Friend of mine turned twenty.”

“What a coincidence.” Kurusu shook well as he spoke before straining the mixture into a champagne glass. He popped the cork of a champagne bottle, producing a string of mist from the bottle’s lips before it tipped into the glass and was sealed off again. “It’s this fellow’s birthday, too.”

“Oh, do you know him?” She turned to address Akechi as Akira passed her the drink, which she caught in a hand without looking.

His face, florid from inebriation, remained slanted towards his empty glass. “What’s it to y—”

  
“Well, happy birthday.” She bobbed her drink as if to give a toast, before knocking it back. To this, Akechi had nothing to say.

The second customer felt more like an intruder barging in on the first time alone he’d get with Kurusu in a while. Refusing to look her way, he stared up at Akira who had set to work wiping water rings off the surface. “Hey, got anything a bit stronger?”

“Like what?”

“Judging from his looks…” The young woman, more experienced than either of them, proposed: “You can’t go wrong with a glass of old fashion.”

“Seems like the type, doesn’t he?” Kurusu began by tossing a sugar cube into a glass, before adding a splash of club soda and a dash of angostura. After pouring in bourbon whiskey, he used a bar spoon to lower in a large chunk of ice. Then, Akira squeezed in the juice out of a thin lemon and orange peel before placing them criss-cross into the glass. _Like rabbit ears_ , thought Akechi.

The young woman mumbled over the edge of her glass, “He’s quick _now_ , but don’t let that fool you. Anyone can put together a classic like that. When he first started out, the kid was all thumbs.”

“You wound me, madame.” Akira turned the drink over to Akechi. 

She indicated her neighbor with her half-drunk glass. “Bit of a sullen one, isn’t he?”

“Don’t mind Akechi; he’s been dumped.” As he said this, she finished her glass and produced in the fork of her fingers a handful of 100 yen coins. The woman dropped them onto the counter and nodded a farewell. “Leaving so soon?”  
  
“I’d better hit the hay. Work tomorrow.”  
  
“Have a good night.” Kurusu’s eyes swept from the entrance towards the rosy complexion and scintillating eyes of his sole customer. Akechi could sense the heat creeping up to his face and the dizziness passing over him as he continued to sip. He undid his tie fully and unbuttoned the top of his shirt before the hot spell could smolder him, unintentionally exposing to Akira his flushed throat and collarbones. _You can’t take your alcohol, can you?_

With a bemused spark in his eyes, he hissed a sharp exhale after a long swallow and asked: “ _Have_ I been dumped?”

“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news.”

“That’s a pity.” He paused. “What was my ex’s name?” As he asked, the bar hostess emerged from the backroom to check on her pupil. Lala spotted the ruddy kid three sheets to the wind and alone at the counter. 

The hostess exchanged eye-rolls with her employee. “Friend of yours?”  
  
“Something like that,” he whispered. “I might need help with him, actually.”  
  
“Don’t look at me, he’s your responsibility.” She vanished back into the other room before he could beg for a hand. She’d already decided he’d learn to figure it out for himself.

Akechi’s ears picked up on the deep voice. “Drag queen?” he asked tactlessly.

Kurusu cleared the champagne glass from where the woman sat. “What’s it to you?”  
  
“None of my business, I know. Just wondering.” He took another long sip. “If it was a part of the job, I mean.”

“She _did_ promise to pay me extra if I took a shift in the leather skirt and stilettos sitting in the backroom.” Akira caught a chuckle before it bubbled up his throat.  
  
“Will you?”

“What do you think?” 

Akechi closed his eyes, evidently to visualize something. Even his eyelids were flushed. “I can pic—”  
  
“I’m kidding.” He cut his friend off before he said anything that’d land them both in an awkward situation. Akechi’s detective instincts truly amounted to nothing when he was intoxicated. “Never mind that, just drink and forget your heartbreak.”

“That’d call for something stronger.” He slammed down his empty glass, leaning towards Kurusu with a moony look in his eyes. The sonorous saxophone music might’ve lulled him halfway through his sentence. “Sazerac on the rocks.”

“Pace yourself, juicer. Let’s leave that for another night. Stick to a white Russian, for now.” Before Akechi could dispute this, Akira filled the shaker with ice cubes and cream. He poured coffee liqueur and vodka in, then shook it well and strained it into a chilled rocks glass.

Akechi threw a skeptical, narrow-eyed look at it. The gesture only further bleared his vision. “Seems more like dessert in a glass.”  
  
“Delightfully alcoholic dessert.” The glass traveled across the counter and landed in his grip. Kurusu stood with his hands at his hips, waiting to watch him eat his words. “Isn’t that your cup of tea, anyway? With a sweet tooth like yours?”

“S’posse I haven’t outgrown that, have I?” With a trembling hand, Akechi quaffed the bittersweet combination. The glass slammed back onto the table as he had to knock on his chest before choked on the mouthful. A thick wad of cream had been glued to his lips. “Mm!”

“Eh? How’s that for _dessert in a glass_?”

“I jus’ started and I’m ready for another.” The words emerged slurred together before he lost himself in the bottom of the glass again.

Akira glanced at his phone, then at Akechi patting his mouth with a pleated napkin. _Still well-mannered, even as a wreck_. “Not so fast, dipso. It’s past your curfew.”

“Five more minutes,” he whined, the napkin curled into his fist. “ _Per favore_.”

“My shift’s over. Pay up, boozer. That’s ¥4,000.” Akechi produced his wallet and extracted the bills, before almost flinging them down onto the counter. After returning it to the front pocket of his pants, he sat staring at the point the ceiling met the wall in a daze.

Kurusu lifted the barrier between the bartender’s area and where the customers sat. He made his way over to Akechi. “Come on.”

“I hear you.” Akechi blew out a long, vocalized exhale that sounded more like a groan as it went on. He pushed himself from his seat and made an attempt to stand, but may’ve tipped forward and landed flat on his face had Akira not caught him. The young man found himself being half-pushed and half-dragged out the door before the smooth jazz had been traded for the noise of rain against cement.

The two wound up under the feeble streetlight, shielded from the drizzle by the outdoor roof. Kurusu tugged his jacket up over his head while approaching the road slick with rainwater glistening off the asphalt. He kept his eyes peeled for a taxi cab as Akechi stood behind, singing an Orbison song to himself over the distant sirens.

“Oh, _Mama-a-a_ , I'd like to run to you, Mama,” he crooned, “I'd come home today, er, but things won't work that _way-y-y_. Gotta stay, be a man if I can, _Mama-a-a_.”

“What’re you doing?”  
  
“Serenading _mia mammina_.” He continued swaying side to side, even as he only hummed. Akira returned to him when a cab had appeared and the door invited both young men. Then, he grabbed him by the arm and shoved him into the vehicle. Overhearing a soft thud, Kurusu leaned in as Akechi rubbed his rain-damp head, before giving the driver his friend’s apartment complex address. Bidding Akechi a good night, he dived back out and slammed the door shut.

“That takes care of that.” He withdrew under the roof and donned his jacket again. Akira could take the train back to his dorm, but a pang of guilt crept up on him. He stuck around for a bit until a second cab rolled up. When presented between that and walking back to the train station, Kurusu climbed in before squinting through the front window distorted by the downpour.

He struggled to see Akech in the fog of neon lights from sex shops and strip clubs before Akira struggled to see young Akechi raised in those neon lights. The withered driver tipped his hat back, turning to Akira a face patted down by wrinkles making it difficult to read. “Where to?”

“Follow that car,” he began in the tone he’d heard in films, before adding, “please.” The lights above dimmed when he shut the door then indicated to the driver which vehicle he was referring to. When met with a skeptical look, he hastened to explain. “A tipsy friend insisted on going home alone and jumped in, but it’s a long trip so I don’t trust him to get back to his apartment without causing trouble.” With the philosophy of most old-fashioned Japanese men, the cab driver went with the flow rather than question it.

The two disembarked their respective cabs outside Akechi’s apartment building and both drivers were paid out of Akira’s wallet. “You owe me,” he grumbled while lugging him towards the building. Akechi had his arm hooked around Kurusu’s shoulders as Akira gripped onto his companion’s waist. “Can’t you even walk a couple of steps without toppling over?”

“Why not just let me snooze outside? It’s fine. I can lay on the ground right here, curl up, and drift off. It doesn’t make a difference. What’s wrong with sleeping on the streets?”

“Let the raccoons adopt you, and—hey.” He spared the body knotted in his arms a glance. The figure tangled into his grip as if it was the only force holding him together. Akira almost expected him to dissolve like March snow on a branch. “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

“See? I’m always right. What’d I tell y—” Akechi let go of Kurusu’s shoulders, nearly falling backward before both of Akira’s arms seized him.

Bringing him back to his feet, he wondered at how light Akechi felt. “Jeez, next you’ll be asking me to tango.”

“The setting reminds me of those golden Hollywood films—”

“ _Nothing_ like them.”

“—when the leading man and heroine would kiss in the rain.” He caught Akechi gaze at him with a strange look in his eyes, raindrops caught between his lashes. In a low voice, he asked, “Have you ever been kissed in the rain?”

“Why do you ask?” He stopped in his tracks when Akechi's drenched hand clasped the back of Akira’s neck. 

He slid his long fingers up into his hair and shifted close enough for Akira to feel the booze-warmed breath from his heavy exhales and a startled, tight feeling in Kurusu's chest. Kurusu frowned, yet flinched—moving away would involve letting him fall.

Akechi caught Akira off-guard by planting a fleeting peck on the tip of his nose. “Huh?”

A grin spread across Akechi’s mouth while he shoved himself away, giggling like a fool. “Now you can say you have, _gattino_.” He dissolved into a fit of laughter before Akira made a sharp turn and sped up in his strides. Akechi reached out, still gripping his hip from the soreness of laughter. “Hey, wait.”

“Do that again and I’m dropping you flat on your face and leaving.”

“ _Scusa_ .” He pursued Akira with paces so fast he nearly slipped off the wet surface of the pavement. “I _know-w-w_ , it was dumb.” The rest of the trip had been carried out in sullen silence.

———

“So you started hitting on a woman. Badly, I might add. It was all the poor thing could do to get through her drink and leave.”  
  
“What? That doesn’t sound like me.”  
  
“The awful flirting?”  
  
“Making advancements, to begin with.”

“Oh—I wouldn’t know about that.”  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“My shift ended, but you were still hungry,” Akira went on, ignoring his friend, “so I decided to treat you to pizza. That was the first time I saw someone eat a whole pizza pie by shoving a slice into their mouth at a time. Crust to tip.”

“In public?!”  
  
“Where else? In a restroom? Because when I had to drag you to one, you did make some good friends there.”

“You know what? I don’t want to hear it. Skip to the part where we leave.”  
  
“Where _you_ leave. You were about to foxtrot your way home in the drizzle. It was a miracle I took a cab with you before you made an ass out of yourself and got home sopping wet.” Akira took a second to fetch the first factual occurrence in his tall tale. “You owe me ¥3,000, by the way.”

“For _one_ ride? Never mind, things should’ve calmed down from there, right? I mean, what’s the worst I could do at home?”  
  
“The second we got out, you began belting out—” Akira paused to retrieve a song from the top of his head and his mind returned to his karaoke appointment with Ann two nights prior —“ _My Heart Will Go On_.”

“What?” Though Akechi enjoyed Western music as much as the next guy, English wasn’t among them.

“By Céline Dion. You’re pretty… passionate under the influence.”

“Who the hell is—? Please tell me that’s all I did before we entered my apartment.”  
  
“Oh, yeah, other than trying to publicly kiss me.”

“ _Akira_.”

“Just telling it like it is. So, we climbed up your apartment building…” 

  
  


After climbing endless flights of stairs and fumbling with keys, the two stood at the threshold of Akechi’s dingy apartment. Akira’s hands were too occupied with propping his friend up to search the wall for light switches. He pushed the door closed with his hip and dragged Akechi over to a couch revealed to them by a strip of moonlight, resting him there. “You’re soaked, come to think of it.”

“So are you,” grumbled Akechi. Not listening, Kurusu receded into the shadows and searched his surroundings for anything to dry him off. His search led him to a compact bathroom in which, as he turned the lights on, a myriad of cream jars and the fragrance of vetiver greeted him. Without entering, he swiped from the towel rack and was on his way out. It was only as he stepped back into the living room he uncovered a floor lamp and flicked the switch. 

The room itself resembled a display in a furniture store—tastefully arranged and seemingly untouched. Akira found it difficult to believe anyone lived there, even more so a young man. The young man in question had been laying with his arm drawn across his eyes until the sounds of Akira’s presence prompted him to sit back up. “What’re we gonna do with you?” mumbled Kurusu as he tossed the coarse, gray towel around Akechi’s drenched hair. Behind his mess of tawny locks, the young man reassembled a stray dog more than anything.

He caught his friend giving him an odd look as he dried his head—more meditative and less devilish than the one he encountered outside. Though larger, his eyes darkened to a merlot red from drunkenness mirroring the cognitive Akechi who Akira had chanced upon back on the cruise ship several years prior. “…What?”

“ _Mammina_ would do this. She’d tell me to stay at home, but I sometimes waited outside the bar she worked in regardless, until her shift was over. Even as it rained.” His eyes went rheumy, and Akira couldn’t tell if it was intoxication or sentimentality. “Then she’d drag me back to our place, irritated I wouldn’t listen yet worried I’d ‘catch a cold’ more than anything.”

“A handful, were you?”

“I didn’t like being away from her for too long.”

“Why do you call her _‘mammina’_ , anyway?” Akira dropped the towel from his head and undid Akechi’s tie.

He chuckled drowsily, “What do…what do you suppose I ought to call her?”  
  
“ _‘Mother’_ , the way you always have.” Akechi’s grin fell as he turned Akira’s words over in his mind, mystified. 

When Akira began to unbutton the top of his drenched shirt, Akechi’s hand shot up to grab Kurusu’s. “Hey, what’s the big idea?”  
  
“Easy there, bambino.” He shook his grip off and continued. “You’ll get sick if you sleep in that.”  
  
“You even…you sound like her, too.” Akechi’s hands slid back down, complying as Akira tugged his shirt off his shoulders and lifted his arms to pull them out of the sleeves. The sultriness of the room startled him once he shed the icy fabric; he forgot it was June. He had spent his birthday night with the boy he remembered attempting to murder like it was yesterday. A paroxysm of nausea washed over him.

“Yeah, yeah, just don’t start calling me _madre_.” Kurusu shrugged off his jacket, bunched it up and tossed it onto Akechi while caring little for the fact it hit him smack in the face. Folding the shirt loosely on the coffee table, he rose to his feet and punched the lamp’s light switch off. The shift from sunset to midnight left only Akechi’s face visible in a slanting moonbeam when he laid down again. He’d still been drunkenly twinkling at Akira in a way that made his face shed fifteen years.

“Before you go,” he began again in a fireside voice, “I’ve got a confession to make.”  
  
“Mm? Now?”  
  
“It’s a secret.” He beckoned Akira closer. Kurusu studied the vacant room and questioned the sense of whispering at all. Humoring him the way he would a child, he crouched anyway and inched towards the man-boy. “I…” He cracked up as if struggling to finish a joke despite his hushed voice. “...I’m _re-e-eally_ glad you found me the day we met at the talk show—when you took my hand into yours and life got a little less dull.”

Akechi worded it like his whole life had been a game of hide-and-seek—rounds of waiting to be discovered until Akira finally caught him. “Why’s that a secret?”

“Does a snake in the grass like me deserve to say that after all’s said and done? You can’t know I like you, anyway. If you figured it out yourself, I’d have to resent you twice as much.”

“You just said you liked me.”

“Now, there. Do you see? I despise the things you know about me before I do.” He fixed Akira with a heavy-lidded gaze. “But, you only know _that_ because I told you so, which means I… win.”

“That’s—” Akira paused to make sense of the remark, searching for the logic behind it before scoffing at how everything was a competition with him. “…I like you, too.” By the time the words escaped him, he realized Akechi had already dozed off. 


End file.
